The term ' Testament,' in the expression ' Old and New Testaments,' applied to the two greal divisions of the B., has an interesting history. There can be no doubt that it is due to an acci- dental mistranslation of SiaeiJKri, which, originally meaning 'arrangement' or 'disposition,' came to signify a testament or w ill. But in the LXX the word was adopted as the tr. of the Heb. ni? or ' covenant,' and the ' new covenant ' was in duu time exjiressed by the same term. St. Paul speaks of the Heb. Scriptures read in the synagogue as the 'old covenant' (2 Co 3" RV), and of the ministers of Christ as 'ministers of anew covenant' (2 Co 3«). Only in He 9"- " is it po.ssible to niain- tain that the sense of testamentary disposition is more probable than that of covenant. By the end of the 2nd cent., accordingly, we find t) TraXaiT) SiafijJKTj, the old covenant, ami ^ Kairii SiaOi'iKTj, the new covenant, the established expres- sions for the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. Origen, in the beginning of the 3rd cent.,
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mentiona * the divine Scriptures, the so-called Old and New Covenants' {De Frincip. iv. 1).
In the Latin rendering of iiaSriKT) there was at first some hesitation between instrumentum and testnmcntum, both legal terms, the former de- noting any authoritative or official document ; the latter, as already indicated, meaning ' will ' or ' disposition ' (of property). Instrutnentum is referred to by Tertullian as being used in Africa; but tlie other, through tlie authority of the Vulg., passed into more general use. When in the Vulg. Jerome is translating directly from the Heb., he uses fcediu or pactum for the Heb. bCrith ; but when, as in NT and in certain portions of OT, he is revising the Old Lat. version, he allows testamentum to remain. Thus, though in thought the Christian Church has never lost sight of the two great divisions of Scripture as the records of the two dispensations or covenants which God instituted for His people, the idea has been somewhat obscured by the titles appropriated to these groups of WTitings.
II. Original Languages. — The language of by far the greater part of OT is Hebrew. The name Hebrew (lav) is applied to Abraham (Gn 14'"), either in respect of descent from an ancestor Heber (Gn jOa. M. 2»)^ Qp more probably because he came (Jos 24") ' from the other side of the flood,' irijn -q-ji^. Hebrew is a branch of the great Semitic (so called from Shem, son of Noah) family of languages, and has its cognates in the Arabic, the Assyrian of the cuneiform inscriptions, the Aramaic, Phoenician, and Ethiopic tongues. Though traces of dialectic diti'erences appear in the Scriptures themselves (compare the pronunciation of the word Shibboleth, Jg 12*), the comparative isolation of the Hebrews preserved their language more or less unaffected by foreign influences until after the Captivity, when other elements were introduced into it. The Hebrew (Aram.* dialect is referred to several times in NT (Jn ri» 19"- "■ », Ac 21« 22'^ 26'*), and even (Mt 26") a provincial (Galihean) form of this. 'The exceptions to the general use of Hebrew in OT are Ezr 4'-6'» 7'--*, Jer 10", Dn 2*-!^. These pas.sages are written in an Aramaic dialect, which, however, differs from that in which the Targiuus were written, and also from Syriac.
The language of NT writers, on the other hand, is Greek, but in the form known as Hellenistic Greek, that is, the form which had come into use among the Hellenists or Jews of the Dis- persion. From the time when Alexander the Great (B.C. 356-323) founded a Jewish colony in Alexandria, this dialect had established itself at all centres where Jew and Greek came into fre- quent contact. The OT had been translated into it, forming the version know-n as the Septuagint (LXX), and this ' Hebrew thought in Greek clothing,' as it has been termed, gave its tone and character to the language in which the NT is also written. At the time of Christ, Greek was the prevailing language throughout the Uoman Empire, the language of educated men, and no le.ss that of commercial life. It has been ably argued that (Sreek was the common language of Palestine in the days of our Lord, and that the Gospel records therefore present us with His discourses in the very words in which they were spoken. But the
f;eneral consensus of opinion is against this iyi>othesis, and indeed tiiere is reason to believe that the greater part, at lea.st, of St. Matthew's Gospel, may have had an Aramaic original. The Greek of NT is the ' common dialect,' which had l)een formed out of Attic Greek bv the intro- duction of provincialisms and the various modih- cations necessary to enable it to serve many pur])oses throughout a vast region. As it appears in our sacred writings it is largely influenced, as
already indicated, by the LXX, and adapted for the communication of tlie religious ideas due to the special character of Christianity.
III. Division and Arra.ngk.mknt.— The great division of the B., as already mentioned, is into the Books of the OT and those of the NT. The former consists, in the Eng. B., of 39 books, but in the Heb. B. of 24 only— 1 and 2 S, 1 and 2 K, 1 and 2 Ch, Ezr and Neh, and the 12 Minor Prophets being respectively counted as one book. Tlie number, according to the account of Josephus, was in his time still further reduced by adding the Book of Kuth to Judges, and that of Lamentations to Jeremiah. This reckoning probably originated in a desire to bring the number of books, possibly as part of a general mnemonic scheme, into accord- ance with the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. It was in use, according to the testimony of Origen, as late as the middle of the 3rd cent. Another enumeration is that of Epiplianius, who, by resolving Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles again into two b<5oka each, made of the twenty-four, twenty-seven books. A point of greater interest and importance is the grouping of these books. In the Heb. B. they fall into three main divisions : — 1. The Law, or Torah (."niB) ; 2. The Prophets, or Nebiim (d-n'^j) ; 3. The Holy Writings, or Kethubim (o-ainj, aytiypaipa). Tlie Torah in- cludes the five books (Pentateuch) associated with the name of Moses. The Nebiim are divided into the ' former prophets,' or historical books, and the ' latter prophets,' or proiilietical writings in the stricter sense. The Kethubim include (a) the Poetical liooks — Ps, Pr, Job ; (6) the five Megilloth or Rolls— Ca, Ru, La, Ee, Est ; (c) other books, Dn, Ezr, Neh, 1 and 2 Ch. Within these divisions the order of the books sometimes varied, and other divisions of great antiquity are extant ; but the one given is of special importance, as will be seen when we touch upon the history of the Canon. In L.W (A.) the arrangement is mainly determined by a consideration of the contents of the l>ooks : hrst ccme the Historical, then the Prophetic, and lastly the Poetical books. From the LXX this arrangement passed into the Vulg. and other versions.